highs and lows

the past few weeks have definitely not been my finest time at UQ. i'm not sure whether it's due to an incorrect dose of thyroid medicine or the fact that d-day is rapidly approaching (23rd birthday... which means i will be SEVEN years older than some of the students here) or overall dissatisfaction with mean girls, drama and excessive drinking, but i am ready to just hurry up and graduate and do something more meaningful with my life. most people revel in routine and the comfortable--i'm learning everyday that i could not be more opposite.

on a high note, classes are going substantially better than last semester!! it makes me sad to know i most likely won't spend my career out scuba diving anymore, but in the present, graduation actually seems like a possibility now that chemistry is out of the picture! whoooooo! i'm taking a cool creative writing class and a wayyy less cool "fundamentals of writing" class, but i have an amazing tutor. it's a lot more daily work than last semester, but one of my finals is writing a short story. pretty sweet.

on another high note, an american exchange student, an english exchange student and i just booked tickets to spend a week in new zealand in june! thank god... it had been a while since i was plane-ticket-less/upcoming-destination-less and it was making me severely crabby. we're flying into christchurch, renting a car and hoping to get in snowboarding, hiking around milford sound and... well, we'll pretend for my mom's sake that we won't be skydiving. hot air ballooning and street luging are pretty high on the to-do list as well. you only live once, right? i'm trying to convince aaron, another american girl, to spend a long weekend scuba diving and sandboarding with me on stradbroke island during our mid-semester break at the beginning of april. all i know is that i need to get out of brisbane for a while or i'll go completely insane!

i'm still trying to plan out what i'll be doing during our "winter" break in july. hopefully a job will materialize soon (yet another low of the moment... have spent hours job searching to no avail) so i can fund an adventure of some kind that does not involve teenage girls and union college. i was searching online and found a volunteer program where you live on a sailboat in greece and track dolphin pods. i've realized that prostitution and/or drug dealing may not be beneath me if it means getting on that sailboat :) i was really hoping that i could do 2 more semesters at UQ, then a year abroad and then finish my last here, but i just found out that i have to stay here for a total of 2.5 years before i can study abroad. that's 3 semesters longer than i've been anywhere else, so it seems a bit daunting.

this week is crazy busy with lots of assignments/papers due, college idol on wednesday night, dinner with carolyn on thursday and going out for my birthday on saturday (we're pretending i'm turning 21), but hopefully that will be enough to distract me from the gutting email from the study abroad office and unemployment woes!

'i watch the stars from my windowsill. the whole world is moving and i'm standing still.' --the weepies

'she told him that she believes in living bigger than she's living now, but her world keeps spinning backwards and upside down... she said he said live like no tomorrow. every day we borrow brings us one step closer to the edge. where's your treasure, where's your hope if you get the world and lose your soul?... life's more than fame and rock and roll and thrills. all the riches of the kings end up in wills. we got information in the information age but do we know what life is outside of our convenient lexus cages?' --switchfoot

oops

i've been terrible about updating. life is pretty standard at the moment. classes have started which are keeping me INSANELY busy. writing is definitely easier that chemistry (as in, i don't feel like vomiting every time i have to go to class), but it's a lot more daily work. some of it is pretty stupid (we're learning how to use commas) and some is challenging, but so far it feels better than anything math-related. i'm also taking a really cool sociology class called "human bodies, society and culture." last week's lecture was about tattoos, piercings and body art. some of it was quite disturbing. in fact, i think it's convinced me to never get another tattoo or piercing again. (i can hear my mom cheering from here). i mean, labia piercings? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

anyway, i will post some pictures from the past couple weeks. red week (first week of classes) was spectacular. conor came up... down... over?... i don't know geography... for crommie bunker: back to the future. very entertaining.

me, meagan and izzi at crommie

hot glasses, hey?

hot mess.

some of the new (and returning) americans at dunder bar

getting ready for ladies night at dunder

i'm back.

well, i'm back in oz. i ended up skipping sydney and heading straight to brisbane, where i spent a few days with lisa, a friend from scotland. she managed to keep me awake the entire first day and even cooked me a delicious dinner!... so i think jetlag has been pretty non-existent. the 3:30-4:30 am wakeup calls have more to do with the horrendous time difference with holland than still being on MN time :)

yesterday was move-in day... SO hot, humid and rainy. ugh. i opened up my boxes to find that a brand new pair of heels (worn once!) were covered in mold. it was pretty disgusting. but my room has been kate-ified, so i'm feeling a lot better now that i'm not living out of a suitcase. my hall consists almost entirely of aussie guys!

classes started today but i have the world's best schedule. no classes on mondays or fridays and my earliest class starts at 10! yeah, pretty amazing. i've spent the day finishing unpacking, running random errands and checking items off a monster to-do list.

it's both good and strange to be back. i thought i missed the boys while i was in MN, but it turns out that is only a fraction of how much i miss them now that i'm back. there are hardly any international students living in college this semester, so it feels really different than it did last semester.

as much as i love oz, it feels like my heart is stretched pretty far across the world at the moment. my grandpa is in the hospital after a major heart surgery, where he's been now since before i left for school. he's surrounded by family... so part of my heart is there. my very best friend for the past 6 months is in holland, so part of my heart is there. and everyday i can't stop thinking about tanzania and the kids at peace house. a very large part of my heart is there. this week at college is "red week." in other words, an event has been planned every single night so we can all go out and get wasted. it's definitely fun, but it doesn't fill my heart up like singing and dancing and pretending to play netball with the phs students did. i can't stop missing it.

hopefully once classes start and i settle into a routine, i'll become more content with just letting myself be fully here now. if nothing else, i have a break in july that i can go adventuring in :)

we got older and i should have known (don't you feel alive?) that i feel colder when i walk alone (oh but you'll survive). so i may as well ditch my dismay (bombs away). circle me and the needle moves gracefully back and forth. if my heart was a compass you'd be north. risk it all 'cause i'll catch you if you fall wherever you go. if my heart was a house you'd be home. --owl city

slow down

calm down

don't worry

don't hurry

trust the process. --alexandra stoddard